Fountain of Youth Colonnade, Tower of Jewels Within the colonnades of the Tower are two wall-fountains by American women. The Fountain of Youth in the eastern colonnade is the work of Edith Woodman Burroughs. She has given us the eternally desired fountain in a new aspect, not as the legendary restorative that changes age to adolescence, but as the fount of perpetual youth that keeps inspiring and vivifying the race and every stage of our life. An exquisite nude girl stands in a beautifully balanced archway rising like a flower from a pedestal on which are seen, like roots, vaguely outlined, the faces of her ancestors. She is Youth, the center of life, for which the world, its dreams and its rewards are made. The side panels show the ships of life laden with the aged and manned by infants, off on the sea of time on the endless quests upon which youth and desire for its fulfillment's keep the world launched. However, the enduring charm of the fountain certainly comes from the little-girlhood of the central figure, the gentle, expectant sweetness of waning childhood and the perfect purity of the emotion it produces. Fountain of El Dorado Colonnade, Tower of Jewels Within the West colonnade of the Tower of Jewels is the other fountain desired by all the world - the Fountain of El Dorado. Like the Fountain of Youth it is connected by legend with early Spanish exploration in America. Long ago, the story goes, there lived in Mexico or South America a golden king who scattered treasures along his path. El Dorado and his realm have long been symbols of the elusive gold sought by mankind in all ages and every clime. In this fountain by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, it is not the mere possession of wealth that is so sought, but those joys of which our mistaken imaginings make gold the symbol. In the central composition here pictured, the Gilded One has vanished through the portals. Impersonal, unresponsive attendants in Aztec garb guard the door from suppliant followers. With subtle symbolism they give no sign as to whether or not they will relent and give entrance. But the fact that branches of trees have grown close across the opening seems to imply that hope is slight. Frieze Details, Fountain of El Dorado